ME AND YOU

Anna Deavere Smith

Professor  ·  NYU Tisch School of the Arts

Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher, and author credited with creating a new form of theater — one that combines the journalistic technique of interviewing subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance. A pioneer of verbatim theater, she has created over fifteen one-person shows drawn from hundreds of interviews, including Twilight: Los Angeles, named one of the best plays of the last twenty-five years by The New York Times, and Fires in the Mirror, a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” the National Humanities Medal awarded by President Obama, two Tony nominations, and honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and beyond. Now, she again surpasses the norm of traditional theatre, and dares to explore the space between Performer and Observer, between I and Thou, between Me and You.